Viruses and Commodore 

Virus checking is becoming a must-do activity at every turn on for those in the megacomputer world.
To fail to check for viruses is to risk the entire contents of the hard drive. And since megacomputers
rely on the hard drive for every aspect of their operation, an infected hard drive passes the organism to
the whole system.

For that reason, it is becoming common practice to install a virus checking program that boots along
with the Disk Operating System (DOS). This germ detector searches through the entire Disk Operating
System and other data on the hard drive, looking for what shouldn't be there. If it finds any microbes, it
eradicates them.

This process, of course, is time consuming. And when added to the time it takes to boot the Disk
Operating System in the first place, it can leave the user waiting for what seems an eternity on these
otherwise lighting-fast machines. This interminable startup delay prompted one who forsook what he
called the "slow-as-a-slug" Commodore to utter an unprintable remark.

A computer virus, naturally, is not organic. It is a little bit of virulent program code that wedges itself
into the Disk Operating System and spreads itself throughout the infected disk to cause what- ever
chaos it is programmed to do. Most viruses are coded to lie dormant until a specific event occurs, like a
date, time, or other computer related activity. The number of different computer viruses now count in
the thousands.      There is an interesting parallel between the real world of microorganisms and this world
of computer diseases. Filthy environments provide the breeding ground for both. Just as the one
plagues those who share needles, so does the other curse those who share copyrighted software. As
one said, pirated software is nothing more than a painted woman offering herself as the real thing,
carrying the scourge of all those who pass her around.

Viruses, as such, are not a problem for Commodore 8-bit machines. This is mainly due to the fact that
the disk drives used, including hard drives, rely on a ROM-based Disk Operating System. ROM, being
Read Only Memory on a chip, cannot be changed. Therefore, Commodore's Disk Operating System
cannot be infected.

MS-DOS, etc., on the other hand, is itself a program. It resides on the hard disk. Hence, infecting the
Disk Operating System with the nefarious coding not only affects the whole machine, but allows its
spreading to everything coming into or going out of the machine. 

However, there are a few dirty tricks to which Commodore users are susceptible. One such nasty is a
countdown routine hidden in a program that causes the disk to be unexpectedly reformatted But these
mean-spirited shenanigans are limited to the programs in which they reside and imperil only disk in the
drive. 

Other malevolent schemes designed to wipe out files or corrupt data do exist. And some of these do
have the ability to copy themselves to any disks used in conjunction with the disk containing them.
Again, though, that is the limit of their viability. The spurious coding dies at turn off, and it cannot
resurrect itself until the disk containing it is again used.     The foregoing should not alarm anyone in the
Commodore community. Besides the built-in immunities inherent with the Commodore Disk Operating
System, the reprobates given to inventing such maladies no longer find any satisfaction afflicting the
beggarly world of Commodore. They have mega-fish to fry! Hence, most of their dirty work has long
since seen the light of day and been eradicated. 

A related benefit is that during the same time users uncovered the mischievous deeds, the bugs that
invariably accompany initial program development and new equipment designs also came to light. As a
result, the critters whose tracks and droppings make for messy use are all but nonexistent in today's
popular programs. To a slightly lesser extent, the insects crawling around inside Commodore equipment
have also been exterminated. And as for the surviving bugs, today's programs for the most part avoid
them, making them of little consequence. Commodore users, therefore, operate in a relatively virus-free
and bug-free environment. That makes for a generally healthy computer experience. And, like good
health, the worth of this blessing is fully appreciated only by those who don't have it.

(Compiled from various sources; reprinted from The Gazette, newsletter of CIVIC 64/128 User
Group, Oxnard CA, via The Commodore Information Center web site
(http://home.att.net/~rmestel/commodore.html) )